The Acushnet Co., offspring celebrate century of helping soldiers and golfers survive and thrive

Sunday

Aug 29, 2010 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2010 at 7:07 AM

This year marks both the centennial of the original Acushnet Process Company and the 75th anniversary of the company's best known legacy, the Titleist golf ball.

BRIAN BOYD

Philip E. "Skipper" Young was a problem solver.

That was true whether American soldiers needed better gas masks as World War II loomed or frustrated golfers missed putts because of poorly designed balls.

"He was a doer, and he was a thinker," Richard B. Young, 94, said of his father.

This year marks both the centennial of the original Acushnet Process Company, which Young helped start, and the 75th anniversary of the company's best known legacy, the Titleist golf ball.

Titleist, a brand that now includes clubs, gloves, and accessories and is targeted at avid golfers, has survived recessions, wars, and periodic challenges by competitors to remain a leader in the industry. The makers of the brand celebrated its anniversary with a presentation, including speeches and video, for its employees Aug. 18 at Tabor Academy, repeated for each shift.

"Almost every decade had its period of adversity, and the culture here rose to the challenge, addressed it head on, and came out of it probably stronger and better than they did before," said Jerry Bellis, president of Titleist Golf Balls, in an interview in between presentations.

Looking to increase the supply of quality rubber early last century, Philip Young and Frank Peabody, who both worked for Goodyear, developed a process for removing resin from the sap of a Mexican shrub. Young helped launch the original business in an abandoned two-story building in Acushnet, according to a company history written by Richard Young.

Philip Young started the company in 1910 with the financial support of Allen Weeks, one of his MIT fraternity brothers who hailed from a wealthy family in Marion. Weeks wanted the company located in the Buzzards Bay area so he could continue sailing, according to the history.

The business was already 20 years old and making custom rubber products when a Sunday game of golf inspired a new direction. Philip was playing at New Bedford Country Club when he started to suspect something was wrong with the ball because he was having problems with hooking and slicing.

He convinced his golf partner, who was head of the X-ray department at St. Luke's Hospital, to open up his department and place the ball under an X-ray machine. It turned out its core was off center.

In 1932, Young launched a golf ball division with the goal of making better golf balls. The first Titleist-branded ball was produced in 1935.

Today, the legacy of the original company lives on in two locally based businesses.

The Acushnet Company, which makes Titleist products, has expanded its business from golf balls to clubs, gloves, bags, and accessories. The company employs more than 1,800 people in the New Bedford area, most of them in the golf ball operation, and about 4,500 people worldwide.

The company is now owned by Fortune Brands Inc., a Deerfield, Ill. consumer products company. Acushnet Company produces two other brands — FootJoy (golf shoes and apparel) and Pinnacle (golf balls) — and says it had $1.2 billion in revenues last year. It is based in Fairhaven and has two ball plants in the New Bedford Business Park and one in Thailand.

The rubber division, which made bathing caps and water bottles in peacetime and gas masks in wartime, became a separate company in 1994. It has since been renamed Precix Inc. and has 259 employees in the city making specialized products for the automotive, aerospace and chemical processing industries.

When asked how Titleist has lasted 75 years, Wally Uihlein, chairman and chief executive officer of Acushnet Company, said the employees have contributed to the longevity by upholding the core values of product quality and innovation.

"The people are very much the medium through which all those values become reinforced and perpetuated, and metaphorically, we like to think that each generation represents a steward and bridge builder of the brand," Uihlein said.

Richard Young shared a similar sentiment. He took over after his father died in 1955, and he retired in 1978 and is no longer involved with the original company.

Asked about the secret of the business' success, he said, "I think probably more than anything else is the wonderful relationship we have had with our employees, who have been great people, who have done a great job, and they felt they were part of the company too."

The product's quality and reputation and the company's history instill pride in the employees, said Patty Sands, manufacturing manager at Ball Plant II.

"People are very proud of the product they make — throughout the entire business from the top executives all the way through all levels of manufacturing," said Sands, who has been with the company for 22 years and lives in Marion.

Daniel Gendreau, senior director of golf ball manufacturing at Ball Plant III, said whenever there is a challenge, the employees will do everything they can to protect the brand. Gendreau, a 22-year veteran who lives in Lakeville, said he has a strong sense of obligation to preserve a legacy.

"It speaks to the strength of the brand," he said of the 75th anniversary. "You don't have a lot of brands that have that kind of staying power."

The company benefited from being located in the New Bedford area. When golf balls were wound, the company benefited from the knot-tying experience of a fishing community, Uihlein said.

"Those people had dexterity that frankly you probably couldn't find anywhere else other than a community that had that fishing history," Uihlein said. "So our people were very efficient and very skillful in handling something as skilled-required as handling that thread for many, many years. If we had been located somewhere else, the history might read differently."

The company has also benefited from steady ownership. For the first four decades of Titleist, the company was owned by family. In 1976, Fortune Brands, then known as American Brands, bought the company. It has remained a good, consistent owner since then. Uihlein has been at the helm for nearly 30 years, Bellis said.

"We have been very fortunate that we have had basically two owners and two groups of leaders through 75 years," Bellis said. "We have had constancy of ownership and constancy of leadership during that time."

A key part of the company's strategy has been ensuring the best players in the world use Titleist products, so they would in turn influence other golfers. They emphasize the "pyramid of influence," which they see starting at the top with the elite players and extending down through club professionals and skilled amateurs to a base of recreational players.

"Golfers aspire to play better, and they look to better players and often follow their lead," Bellis said. "Our strategy has been that if we can make the world's very best golf ball — and clubs now — that the very best golfers will want to play the best product in order for them to play their best."

Titleist does not focus on individual endorsements, but instead boasts the number of top players who use their products. Nearly 65 percent of the players on world-wide professional tours are using Titleist golf balls, the company leaders said.

Titleist listens to feedback from three constituencies: golfers, those who sell its products — golf pro shops and retail stores — and the company's employees. It stays aware of their views, through focus groups of customers and surveys of employees.

As long as it's getting positive feedback from those three groups, Uihlein said, Titleist can deliver financial reward to the fourth constituency, its shareholders.

The most recent recession has delivered the latest challenge for the company.

Bellis acknowledged golf is a discretionary activity, which tends to be one of the first businesses hurt by an economic downturn and sometimes one of the last to recover.

"The golf industry, particularly in a mature market like the U.S., is under some stress," he said.

On the other hand, people are careful to find the best value for their dollar in a difficult economy, which can help a strong brand. Even if the market does not grow, Tilteist can maintain and possibly even increase its share of the business, Bellis said.

To keep the business strong even as Americans cut back on their spending, Acushnet Company is looking overseas to expand its customer base.

"We are a global brand and we do have some markets, Asia Pacific in particular, that are growing, and we can feed and fuel those markets from golf balls made in the Greater New Bedford area," Bellis said.

Golf is a middle-class recreation, and a growing middle-class increases the popularity of the sport. As China and Korea become economic engines, their middle class and the interest in golfing is growing, according to Uihlein.

Titleist opened the facility in Thailand earlier this year so it can produce balls in a part of the world where company officials expect to see the most growth in the future, Bellis said.

Officials have sufficient capacity to handle future growth with their current plants, so they have no plans at the moment to build another facility.

The challenge for the golf industry is that it position itself wherever the middle class is growing, Uihlein said.

And Acushnet Company is not waiting for the sport to take off in emerging markets, but it is actively cultivating golf.

"Wherever the middle class has the potential to grow, then the seeds of the game of golf need to be planted," Uihlein said. "That's why we were helping the China Golf Association. We are financing the administration of their educational infrastructure."

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